![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep gamethink 3
Okay, so, finished with everything, including Final Episode and Blank Points. I get so excited at the end I start just summarizing. Stay out if you don't want spoilers.
Aqua's story
First, my irrelevant shipping thoughts: I ship absolutely none of the main trio with each other. I think Ven had a crush on Terra (moreso at the beginning; he grew out of it a little as the hero worship started getting beaten out of him via constant disillusionment) but I saw nothing romantic in Aqua's interactions with either, or in either of their interactions with her. Aqua was concerned about her friends -- both of her friends, in completely equal measure -- but she didn't get emotional or obsess over them, she was just concerned, as she well should have been! So, no shipping of them for me.
But, oh man. Oh man. I'm geeking out.
So I have to say that in three repetitions of these worlds, I feel completely good about this method of storytelling. Every time we went to a world we'd already been to before, we saw a different part of the story -- often went to areas of the map we hadn't been allowed in before (Aqua refuses to go into the Enchanted Dominion castle; she keeps approaching it on the bridge and saying "There's nothing over that way"; YES THERE IS, THERE IS A BIG DAMN CASTLE, AQUA, I CAN SEE IT) -- and usually had a different mechanic or goal (Ven goes tiny and has to collect things for Cinderella's dress, Terra has to escort her, Aqua has to sneak around behind her and make sure things end well; etc). So I enjoyed all the worlds completely!
Aqua got a surprising amount of world-building where she lacked in having a personal stimulus: Terra had his wangst about darkness and Ven had his dilemma with Vanitas, but Aqua got the interesting bits about what light and darkness mean, how they work together, the history of the World, etc. It was pretty awesome. I completely loved her and her story, although I wish that after like the fifth time she would've stopped going "I just missed them :( " on every single world. We know! You missed them five times now! You're sad and trying to look after your friends!
Anyway, details! Kairi's flowery gay keyblade is named Destiny's Embrace. We still have absolutely zero indication that it belongs to Kairi, as in, Kairi is a keyblade master. It still seems like something Riku gave to her, briefly, and that doesn't really fully belong to her. And -- frankly she should be grateful, because it makes banging-on-a-piano noises when it hits something. lol
Both with the wayfinders and with Kairi, Aqua was all, "I cast a completely absurd spell on this!" Can she really do that or is she just being cute? Also, her "spell" on Kairi was really painfully heavy-handed, as was her conversation with Sora later in the game, but at least I'm very grateful that she didn't give him a keyblade -- I respect, really, that she thought, "It's hard to be a keyblade master, I wouldn't wish two of them on the same circle of friends." Really interesting.
Zack and Aqua were ridiculously. cute. Oh my god. Zack hits on her and she gets so flustered and fidgety because -- because no one back home notices she's a girl. Zack doesn't treat her like a girl, which would be insulting, but he notices, and that's so weird for her. I have to say that my ♥ for Aqua went up about 5x after that scene.
I was kind of disappointed that Aqua hadn't made Stitch's wayfinder for him, but I did like the rest of the world -- and I guess I understand that Stitch saw Terra's and he made it because he was jealous of Terra's important shiny thing, and what it meant for him.
So, Aqua's ending was sort of anticlimactic -- really sweet, the declaration that she would keep waiting for Ven to wake up, for as long as it took, and that her belief would help his heart to come back to his body; but still sort of like "Okay..." -- until you realize it wasn't an ending.
The Final Episode
[P.S.: I loved the Aurora sequence with the dress changing colors in the ending, and the sequence where Zack was alarmed and then vanished with only a black feather left behind was NOT COOL. But more importantly.]
This episode blew my fucking mind. Okay, so -- Aqua has to take Ven's body somewhere safe until his heart can return, and so his keyblade takes them to the shattered darkened ruins of The Land of Departure. (Which, by the way, is a stupid name for a world.) We finally come back to what Eraqus told her at the start of the game, which we weren't allowed to hear: the worlds between light and dark, like Land of Departure, like Twilight Town, are really important, and need to be protected. So she brings Ven to the throne, and sets him down on it, and she locks the heart of the world --
and it turns into Castle Oblivion. This is where I start freaking out! Aqua leaves Ven sleeping in Castle Oblivion, which protects him, and the Land of Departure itself, by drawing anyone who goes there "into oblivion". This is completely in accordance with statements made throughout Chain of Memories, KH2, and 358/2 Days that Castle Oblivion is a complete mystery. They don't know where it came from, they don't know why it has these special properties, they don't know how it got to be this way, but they do know that it's special, which is why they're researching it. Still not sure why Namine woke up there instead of Twilight Town the way Roxas did...
Then, she leaves, but she promises him she'll be right back. *SOBS* Her sorrow throughout this ending, and her calm resignation, is kind of heart-breaking and wonderful.
Aqua still believes that Terra can be saved, no matter what she's been told. She wants all three of them to be together again. So she follows him to Radiant Garden, where a very confused Xehanort, who is Master Xehanort right now, is waking up. He attacks her and after a kickass line ("It's Master Aqua.") they fight. During this fight, it's very clear that Terra is not, in fact, gone -- he's still fighting, he still helps Aqua during the fight, and at the end of it Xehanort stabs himself to rid his heart of Terra. He falls into the dark realm and Aqua lunges in after him. She's able to save him, by sacrificing herself, using her keyblade and her armor to help him escape. Oh god. Then Aqua ends up stumbling through the realm of darkness, alone, miserable. She's attacked by like, six Darksides. And just as she's about to give up, Ven and Terra's keyblades appear and save her, and she reminds herself that she has to keep going, for them.
Xehanort, now without any kind of memories whatsoever, wakes up the next day in Radiant Garden, with Aqua's empty armor and keyblade nearby... (Which explains the extra scenes in Final Mix+.) And meanwhile, tiny Sora in Destiny Islands is crying and he doesn't know why. Riku says that probably someone is unhappy, so Sora should quiet his heart and listen to what he has to say-- And Sora ends up in the Station of Calling, where Ventus's heart has come to him, drawn by his light and the familiarity of this heart. He has to go to sleep now, and Sora can tell that he's sad, but Ven just asks if he can stay in Sora's heart for a while.
And I said, "Game, this does not make what happened with Roxas okay, they are not even."
But the game was not done. There was still--
Then, Blank Points
Oh God, Blank Points. Oh God. This really blew my mind. It still makes my heart beat quicker. I literally gasped a bit during some of the dialogue in this stupid secret ending video. I am a huge loser, you guys. But here's some summary:
-Terra and Master Xehanort are having a conversation inside his heart. Terra basically says he hasn't given up yet; Xehanort is not impressed. There may officially be a part of Terra inside Riku? Good to know.
-Meanwhile, in Radiant Garden, "Xehanort" -- now with his familiar character sprite, is approached by Braig, who is confused by his not being Master Xehanort. But as long as he's not Terra, Braig is willing to work with this. Still no clue about Braig's motivations for working with this guy... Ansem and tiny, tiny Ienzo are walking hand-in-hand down the hallway in the opposite direction, eating sea-salt ice cream. This was mildly questionable at first. And then Ansem looks down at Ienzo and laughs a creepy pedophile laugh while Ienzo innocently eats his ice cream. He is unaware that Ansem is taking him off to molest him. I just about died. It was horrible. No wonder Ienzo never talks.
-Then Aqua stumbles slowly onto the dark shore, where she meets Ansem? DiZ? What's going on? She slowly sits down and curls over her legs. She has no idea how long she's been here, so she is not helpful. It feels like forever, and she's lost track of time. At this point we were whispering, "Is this after the fall of Radiant Garden or after Kingdom Hearts 2 somehow?" Then the dude says he doesn't remember who he is, but he remembers doing terrible things to people -- that's when I gasped. He remembers being DiZ, but not Ansem. He's post-KH2. Aqua survives the end of Kingdom Hearts 2, living for ten years in the realm of darkness. She's so awesome.
He speaks of a boy with a keyblade, and although she gets excited, he's not talking about Ven or Terra, which crushes her a little. But he says this boy can make things right, who will "open the door" and make it so that all those wrongs are remedied, somehow he works in the phrase birth by sleep. Aqua wants to know this boy's name.
"His name is..."
And then we have a montage of every doomed protagonist in the series. Namine; Roxas, Axel, Xion; Ven, Terra. They all look up and say, "Sora," the latter two sets in eerie unison. UH. I like the sentiment, and I like the implication, but could we sound less like we're forming a goddamn Cult of Sora?
-Then Aqua is crying and happy, and we skip to Destiny Islands, where, immediately post-KH2, Sora is mulling over his letter from Mickey. He decides that he's made up his mind and he's going to go and fight again. He has to help "them"; "They made me who I am." Kairi gives him her lucky charm and says, "See you soon."
-The implication I take away from this whole thing is that Sora is the "one who will open the door" and bring about the Next World. And in the Next World, he's going to make it right, for all the people DiZ hurt and all the other people who were lost along the way.
He's going to fix all the horrible endings. Sora is going to create the Next World and there'll be a Roxas and an Axel and a Ven and an Aqua and a Namine etc there. Somehow. I am so freaking out right now. When does Kingdom Hearts 3 come out??
Aqua's story
First, my irrelevant shipping thoughts: I ship absolutely none of the main trio with each other. I think Ven had a crush on Terra (moreso at the beginning; he grew out of it a little as the hero worship started getting beaten out of him via constant disillusionment) but I saw nothing romantic in Aqua's interactions with either, or in either of their interactions with her. Aqua was concerned about her friends -- both of her friends, in completely equal measure -- but she didn't get emotional or obsess over them, she was just concerned, as she well should have been! So, no shipping of them for me.
But, oh man. Oh man. I'm geeking out.
So I have to say that in three repetitions of these worlds, I feel completely good about this method of storytelling. Every time we went to a world we'd already been to before, we saw a different part of the story -- often went to areas of the map we hadn't been allowed in before (Aqua refuses to go into the Enchanted Dominion castle; she keeps approaching it on the bridge and saying "There's nothing over that way"; YES THERE IS, THERE IS A BIG DAMN CASTLE, AQUA, I CAN SEE IT) -- and usually had a different mechanic or goal (Ven goes tiny and has to collect things for Cinderella's dress, Terra has to escort her, Aqua has to sneak around behind her and make sure things end well; etc). So I enjoyed all the worlds completely!
Aqua got a surprising amount of world-building where she lacked in having a personal stimulus: Terra had his wangst about darkness and Ven had his dilemma with Vanitas, but Aqua got the interesting bits about what light and darkness mean, how they work together, the history of the World, etc. It was pretty awesome. I completely loved her and her story, although I wish that after like the fifth time she would've stopped going "I just missed them :( " on every single world. We know! You missed them five times now! You're sad and trying to look after your friends!
Anyway, details! Kairi's flowery gay keyblade is named Destiny's Embrace. We still have absolutely zero indication that it belongs to Kairi, as in, Kairi is a keyblade master. It still seems like something Riku gave to her, briefly, and that doesn't really fully belong to her. And -- frankly she should be grateful, because it makes banging-on-a-piano noises when it hits something. lol
Both with the wayfinders and with Kairi, Aqua was all, "I cast a completely absurd spell on this!" Can she really do that or is she just being cute? Also, her "spell" on Kairi was really painfully heavy-handed, as was her conversation with Sora later in the game, but at least I'm very grateful that she didn't give him a keyblade -- I respect, really, that she thought, "It's hard to be a keyblade master, I wouldn't wish two of them on the same circle of friends." Really interesting.
Zack and Aqua were ridiculously. cute. Oh my god. Zack hits on her and she gets so flustered and fidgety because -- because no one back home notices she's a girl. Zack doesn't treat her like a girl, which would be insulting, but he notices, and that's so weird for her. I have to say that my ♥ for Aqua went up about 5x after that scene.
I was kind of disappointed that Aqua hadn't made Stitch's wayfinder for him, but I did like the rest of the world -- and I guess I understand that Stitch saw Terra's and he made it because he was jealous of Terra's important shiny thing, and what it meant for him.
So, Aqua's ending was sort of anticlimactic -- really sweet, the declaration that she would keep waiting for Ven to wake up, for as long as it took, and that her belief would help his heart to come back to his body; but still sort of like "Okay..." -- until you realize it wasn't an ending.
The Final Episode
[P.S.: I loved the Aurora sequence with the dress changing colors in the ending, and the sequence where Zack was alarmed and then vanished with only a black feather left behind was NOT COOL. But more importantly.]
This episode blew my fucking mind. Okay, so -- Aqua has to take Ven's body somewhere safe until his heart can return, and so his keyblade takes them to the shattered darkened ruins of The Land of Departure. (Which, by the way, is a stupid name for a world.) We finally come back to what Eraqus told her at the start of the game, which we weren't allowed to hear: the worlds between light and dark, like Land of Departure, like Twilight Town, are really important, and need to be protected. So she brings Ven to the throne, and sets him down on it, and she locks the heart of the world --
and it turns into Castle Oblivion. This is where I start freaking out! Aqua leaves Ven sleeping in Castle Oblivion, which protects him, and the Land of Departure itself, by drawing anyone who goes there "into oblivion". This is completely in accordance with statements made throughout Chain of Memories, KH2, and 358/2 Days that Castle Oblivion is a complete mystery. They don't know where it came from, they don't know why it has these special properties, they don't know how it got to be this way, but they do know that it's special, which is why they're researching it. Still not sure why Namine woke up there instead of Twilight Town the way Roxas did...
Then, she leaves, but she promises him she'll be right back. *SOBS* Her sorrow throughout this ending, and her calm resignation, is kind of heart-breaking and wonderful.
Aqua still believes that Terra can be saved, no matter what she's been told. She wants all three of them to be together again. So she follows him to Radiant Garden, where a very confused Xehanort, who is Master Xehanort right now, is waking up. He attacks her and after a kickass line ("It's Master Aqua.") they fight. During this fight, it's very clear that Terra is not, in fact, gone -- he's still fighting, he still helps Aqua during the fight, and at the end of it Xehanort stabs himself to rid his heart of Terra. He falls into the dark realm and Aqua lunges in after him. She's able to save him, by sacrificing herself, using her keyblade and her armor to help him escape. Oh god. Then Aqua ends up stumbling through the realm of darkness, alone, miserable. She's attacked by like, six Darksides. And just as she's about to give up, Ven and Terra's keyblades appear and save her, and she reminds herself that she has to keep going, for them.
Xehanort, now without any kind of memories whatsoever, wakes up the next day in Radiant Garden, with Aqua's empty armor and keyblade nearby... (Which explains the extra scenes in Final Mix+.) And meanwhile, tiny Sora in Destiny Islands is crying and he doesn't know why. Riku says that probably someone is unhappy, so Sora should quiet his heart and listen to what he has to say-- And Sora ends up in the Station of Calling, where Ventus's heart has come to him, drawn by his light and the familiarity of this heart. He has to go to sleep now, and Sora can tell that he's sad, but Ven just asks if he can stay in Sora's heart for a while.
And I said, "Game, this does not make what happened with Roxas okay, they are not even."
But the game was not done. There was still--
Then, Blank Points
Oh God, Blank Points. Oh God. This really blew my mind. It still makes my heart beat quicker. I literally gasped a bit during some of the dialogue in this stupid secret ending video. I am a huge loser, you guys. But here's some summary:
-Terra and Master Xehanort are having a conversation inside his heart. Terra basically says he hasn't given up yet; Xehanort is not impressed. There may officially be a part of Terra inside Riku? Good to know.
-Meanwhile, in Radiant Garden, "Xehanort" -- now with his familiar character sprite, is approached by Braig, who is confused by his not being Master Xehanort. But as long as he's not Terra, Braig is willing to work with this. Still no clue about Braig's motivations for working with this guy... Ansem and tiny, tiny Ienzo are walking hand-in-hand down the hallway in the opposite direction, eating sea-salt ice cream. This was mildly questionable at first. And then Ansem looks down at Ienzo and laughs a creepy pedophile laugh while Ienzo innocently eats his ice cream. He is unaware that Ansem is taking him off to molest him. I just about died. It was horrible. No wonder Ienzo never talks.
-Then Aqua stumbles slowly onto the dark shore, where she meets Ansem? DiZ? What's going on? She slowly sits down and curls over her legs. She has no idea how long she's been here, so she is not helpful. It feels like forever, and she's lost track of time. At this point we were whispering, "Is this after the fall of Radiant Garden or after Kingdom Hearts 2 somehow?" Then the dude says he doesn't remember who he is, but he remembers doing terrible things to people -- that's when I gasped. He remembers being DiZ, but not Ansem. He's post-KH2. Aqua survives the end of Kingdom Hearts 2, living for ten years in the realm of darkness. She's so awesome.
He speaks of a boy with a keyblade, and although she gets excited, he's not talking about Ven or Terra, which crushes her a little. But he says this boy can make things right, who will "open the door" and make it so that all those wrongs are remedied, somehow he works in the phrase birth by sleep. Aqua wants to know this boy's name.
"His name is..."
And then we have a montage of every doomed protagonist in the series. Namine; Roxas, Axel, Xion; Ven, Terra. They all look up and say, "Sora," the latter two sets in eerie unison. UH. I like the sentiment, and I like the implication, but could we sound less like we're forming a goddamn Cult of Sora?
-Then Aqua is crying and happy, and we skip to Destiny Islands, where, immediately post-KH2, Sora is mulling over his letter from Mickey. He decides that he's made up his mind and he's going to go and fight again. He has to help "them"; "They made me who I am." Kairi gives him her lucky charm and says, "See you soon."
-The implication I take away from this whole thing is that Sora is the "one who will open the door" and bring about the Next World. And in the Next World, he's going to make it right, for all the people DiZ hurt and all the other people who were lost along the way.
He's going to fix all the horrible endings. Sora is going to create the Next World and there'll be a Roxas and an Axel and a Ven and an Aqua and a Namine etc there. Somehow. I am so freaking out right now. When does Kingdom Hearts 3 come out??
no subject
Sososososososososoawesomeomg*flail*